Tour for Kids - What a great cause!

Friends and family:

Yesterday I turned my whole season upside down! So many nights I have been coming home talking with Meredith, "what to do? What races? I am turning 40, what would be epic? What is it I LOVE TO DO & how can I match that as part of turning 40? Do I care? Ah screw it, just race....do what you always do..." Blah, blah, blah.....

This week it finally hit me - and it is awesome!!

Tour for Kids is a cycling adventure I have had friends do now for about 5 years or so. I have always wanted to join them but it conflicted with one Ironman or another given it landed in mid August. I don't have those commitments this year! I can do whatever I WANT TO DO. I have set goals that I can cancel; sure, why not!!!!!! So I am doing 800km's of cycling over 4 days for three Oncology camps for kids with Cancer. They are:

1. http://www.ooch.org/ - a privately funded, volunteer based organization that provides kids with cancer and kids affected by childhood cancer with a unique opportunity for growth through challenging, fun, enriching and magical experiences
2. http://www.campquality.com/ Our signature week-long camping program provides a wonderfully unique opportunity for children with cancer to put their illness behind them and concentrate on having fun! Each camper is matched with a trained adult volunteer and medical staff is on-site.
3. http://www.camptrillium.com/ The Trillium Childhood Cancer Support Centre offers and promotes recreational experiences to bring children with cancer and their families together. The Trillium Centre provides an environment that normalizes relationships and experiences, helping children and their families in the healing process and enhancing their quality of life

I am dropping quite a few of my initial 2011 season goals. I stopped running a few weeks ago so Around the Bay = GONE. Green Mountain Stage Race, while I love you so = GONE.

Big goal is now to raise some coin for this great cause by clicking HERE RIGHT NOW!

This is such a great event and I saw how it can change people just this past winter when I helped change to blown tire of one Jim Van Horne in Mississauga. He spoke so passionately about his experience doing Tour for Kids. I reflect on that a lot because while I knew it was THE JVH we didn't talk about that; we talked about this great life altering event while changing a tube. It was quite cool for a sport junkie like me. (If you don't know JVH, please; do some google searching on Canadian Sports broadcasting icons!!! This guy started it in Canada!)

And so, I ask all who read.....all twenty or so (-:)) PLEASE think about donating by clicking this link!. I know money is tight; I know everyone and their cousin ask for your money either at the soccer field, hockey rink, parent/teacher night etc.; but these camps bring life to places with so much doom and gloom that even me, a guy without kids, gets really really pumped about it AND SO CAN YOU!

Thanks for reading. I need to get riding; 800km's over 4 days = sore ass!

Train safe!

Best Triathlete Follow up + Bike Test #2 of the season a success!

Friends and family,

Welcome back and thanks for catching up. There are a few good links imbedded in this post I encourage you to click to. Some of racing and some of great product (that I am not in anyway paid to endorse!!!!)

As a follow up to my previous post re: Best Triathlete ever; thanks for the few emails. Seems pretty much 50/50 - people say Simon or Macca. I will say this, the best 3 finishes I have seen in triathlon all belong to Simon; Sydney, Beijing, and with $200,000 on the line wins a 4 way sprint in Des Moines Iowa. All 3 finishes Simon was dropped and got back on, then won. Yeah, our boy from Kingston's a stud for sure! And too boot, a really approachable genuine guy.

Training update:

this morning I did my second bike test of the year. I am following the Vision Quest Coaching protocol whereby I get a really good warm up in, hit an interval up to a hard effort, recover then do a "step test" of 3 minute intervals one after the other adding 20 watts each interval. So, 3mins at 200 watts; 3 mins at 220 watts and so on until failure. Below are some snap shots from my CycleOps Joule 2.0 computer to show the progression from this morning's effort. The final interval actually felt pretty good but I don't think another 20 watt jump was available to me, I was getting pretty out there physically.

What's important to for the upcoming season is the improvement from the January 21st test. January 21 my last 3 intervals were 301, 315, and 325 watts vs. here being 300, 320, 350. In other words, I made a 7 to 7.5% jump in 6 weeks. That won't be replicated! It will look more like 1 to 2% increases I suspect through to the main races of the season.

Quite happy with the results, now it is time for some food!!!!